by Edwin D. Floyd
Not much studied through most of the twentieth century, Nonnos (fifth century A.D.) is arguably one of the most skilled craftsmen in the entire ancient Greek poetic tradition. He is also enigmatic. Current scholarship suggests that the ascription in the manuscript tradition of the Christian Paraphrase of John and the pagan Dionysiaca to the same author is in fact correct; see esp. Livrea, Prometheus 13, 1987, 97-123. Moreover, it now appears fairly probable that the pagan poem draws upon stylistic features which were first developed for the Christian one; see esp. Vian, Revue des Etudes Grecques 110, 1997, 143-60.
Going beyond Livrea and Vian, this paper makes the claim that various linguistic elements in the Paraphrase specifically look forward to the Dionysiaca, with the two works forming in some sense a unitary whole. More specifically, I suggest that the philosopher-poet Parmenides, whose poem On Nature consisted of two apparently incompatible sections - Aletheia "Truth" and Doxa "Opinion" -, served as Nonnos' model.